The Drama review – Zendaya and Robert Pattinson’s controversial wedding film delivers on its promise
Why it matters: The film's controversial premise directly challenges audience expectations of romantic comedies and high-school narratives.
- "The Drama" is a high-concept, high-anxiety film from Norwegian director Kristoffer Borgli, aiming to discomfit and excruciate in the spirit of films like "Force Majeure."
- Robert Pattinson plays Charlie, a British art historian, who falls for Emma, played by Zendaya, in a love story complicated by a shocking revelation.
- Emma confesses to having planned a high-school shooting at 14, a plan she abandoned only because another shooting upstaged hers, and that her partial deafness was caused by practicing with an assault rifle.
- Borgli employs a psycho-horror style, using weird sound design and dissonant music, to infuse rom-com tropes with an ominous tone, creating an "insouciantly offensive mashup" of Hollywood marriage comedy and high-school shootings.
Kristoffer Borgli's controversial film, "The Drama," starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson, delivers a high-anxiety Euro-satire of American bourgeois aspiration by blending rom-com tropes with psycho-horror elements. The movie centers on Emma's shocking pre-wedding confession of a past high-school shooting plot, revealing a dark secret that threatens to unravel her seemingly perfect relationship with Charlie.
